Re: is eating meat in our nature?

[Keith Wilson <kw503@york.ac.uk>]

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You make some good points, which I will try to address in turn...

Firstly, I should have been more specific about what I meant by altruism 
being at the root of moral behaviour. I was thinking more in terms of the 
way that morality arises from a process of evolution by natural selection 
than whether moral acts are themselves altruistic (although this is 
generally the case). Even though genes improve their own chances of 
survival in a way that could described as 'selfish', one way for a gene to 
promote its own survival is to favour altruistic patterns of behaviour. For 
example, putting other people's safety over ones own. This works because it 
doesn't matter whether the gene survives in my body or in someone else's, 
so long as it (i.e. the particular pattern of self-replicating DNA) 
survives over the long term.

When altruism occurs in higher animals, it becomes incorporated into what 
we might call culture (aka memes, or copyable patterns of behaviour), which 
in turn leads to the emergence of morality. According to this view (which I 
have no idea if it's right or not, but hey, let's see where this goes!), 
our instinct drive towards altruism as a result of genetic 
self-preservation is the ultimate source of and justification for morality 
itself, which gives us a set of norms that have been proven to 'work' over 
evolutionary timescales.

I'm not saying that we have any kind of 'altruism gene' that makes us 
behave morally. Instead, fostering altruistic behaviour is often in our 
genes' best interests, as it helps them to proliferate within the 
population as a whole, rather than being restricted to a few individuals. 
(For example, someone who is kind, generous and helpful may be seen as a 
better mate, and so on. Conversely, pathological aggression is 
self-defeating because we end up wiping ourselves out.) There's no 
inconsistency in having 'selfish' genes create organisms that behave 
'altruistically' to further their own survival. It's just a matter of what 
you describe as selfish or altruistic: the genes or the organism.

The question of 'which group' is really the crux of the argument. If you 
accept that the justification for moral behaviour is genetic (i.e. that we 
look after other people because they share the same genes, or perhaps 
memes, as us), then this argument can be extended to include all other 
people, animals, plants, amoebas etc. Our moral responsibilities towards 
other living things are thus proportionate to our relatedness towards them, 
which raises the question of where do you draw the line.

You could try and use this argument to prove that it's immoral to eat 
carrots because they are genetically related to humans. However, I think 
most people would agree that we have a greater responsibility towards other 
humans than we do towards other species, and so a sensible response might 
be that we have a duty to balance our own survival needs with those of 
other life forms. Seen this way, it is difficult to justify the killing of 
animals for food because, as was previously pointed out, this is completely 
unnecessary for our own survival. Given the fact that we ourselves are 
animals, it seems reasonable to draw the line at anything that has a 
central nervous system, but we still have a moral responsibility towards 
plants and other living things. It's just less than the one we have towards 
fellow animals (all other things being equal).

The point you made about ETs is a tricky one, and I'm not sure how best to 
respond to it. Perhaps morality should take account of cultural or memetic 
factors as well as genetic ones? We would think it wrong to kill a friendly 
ET who just dropped by to say hello, but I doubt that the same would apply 
to aliens that were determined to take over the planet. Does this reflect 
an assessment of how much that we have in common with them? I don't know.

On mousetraps, I'd get a cat and try to restore the population balance with 
the minimum of intervention. In the case of the bear and the endangered 
trees, yes I think we'd have a moral responsibility to save the trees by 
humanely relocating the bear.

- Keith



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